While some are calling yesterday’s change of policy with regard to contraception coverage a win-win for both the Catholic church and the Obama administration, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops does not see this as a win. Instead, they see it as one small little step, and they are pressing for much, much more.

The first amendment’s protection of religious liberty is not a license for religious organizations or individuals to disregard any law or regulation they don’t like. If the White House wants to end this fight, that’s the argument they’re going to have to make to the public. Instead, they have allowed the USCCB to set the terms of the debate, and the USCCB is quite happy to continue doing so.

This isn’t over, folks. Not by a long shot.

Ah, the confusion that reigns when folks talk about church and state . . . SCOTUS rules in favor of religious freedom on one day, and the next day — the very next day! — religious conservatives come out screaming about the threat to religious freedom.

No one could have anticipated . . .

Paul Krugman links to Kim Lane Scheppele about the current state of politics in Hungary. Scheppele notes that after winning the last election the Fidesz party is radically re-writing the constitution in very anti-democratic ways, attempting to make Fidesz policy and political power permanent. Some measures look familiar and should be a warning sign to Americans.

While police are legally empowered to use violence to maintain peace, that empowerment is only to prevent individuals from using violence against others. Under our Constitution, the empowerment laws are not intended to give police carte blanche authority to use violence against individuals who pose no threat or harm to anyone. For law enforcement to use violence outside these specific conditions is itself a crime.

Whenever conservatives get caught with their hands in the till they shout, “Class Warfare!” at those of us who would like to stop their looting. Thinking this a negative, they forget, I guess, that the American democratic experiment was and is just that: a class war.

It has always been about equality vs. aristocracy. It was in the beginning, is now, and will always be.

The original deal between the oligarchy and the rest of us was embedded in the US Constitution. They keep their money and use the government to deploy and protect it, and we get to decide some of what’s left.

Constitution Café is simply a space for ordinary citizens to engage in the extraordinary act of rewriting our Constitution. It’s a natural outgrowth of Phillips’ popular Socrates Café, a forum (or, rather, hundreds of forums, around the country) for ordinary folks to talk philosophy. But Constitution Café is more: Constitution Café is a call to arms, a real vehicle for real change in our constitutional system. Thus Phillips takes us on a journey around the country to meet with groups ranging from a sixth grade class to a Tea Party affiliate to engage with, discuss, and wrestle over the Constitution—and ultimately to change it for our times.

How do you parody people who are already caricatures?

The bombshell dropped alongside the debt limit deal yesterday, aside from Gabrielle Giffords’ return to Congress, was Joe Biden telling a group of House Democrats that the President was prepared to “invoke the 14th Amendment” in the event of the debt limit failing to pass. I’m not sure entirely what he means by that, but there are enormous implications.

With only four days left until the August 2nd deadline and no deal in hand, more and more of the top Congressional Democrats have been coming out in support of the President using the 14th Amendment to ignore the debt ceiling. Yesterday the House’s second ranking Democrat Steny Hoyer (D-MD) came out strongly in favor of this tactic.